Tuesday, March 28, 2006

MUSIC YOU CAN REALLY GET INTO

Here, verbatim, is the ad copy from the website for "iBuzz--the Music Activated iPod sex toy":

iBuzz -- The music-activated orgasm machine!

Works with any MP3 player or portable music device! * Bullet vibrates in time to your music! * Turn the music up for stronger vibrations! * Stimulating fun for him and her! * Easy to use - plug in and play! * Works with or without music!

Only £29.99! Now available in the US!

iBuzz is the musical orgasm machine! The music-activated vibrating bullet stimulates you in time with your favourite music. Which song pushes your butttons?

iBuzz -- It plugs into any music player to let you enjoy your music like never before!

That pretty much says it all. For what it's worth, I've had particularly satisfying results with "Jumping Jack Flash," "Bye Bye Love," "The Flight of the Bumblebee," and, somewhat counterintuitively, "Onward Christian Soldiers."

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

EXCESS BLOGGAGE

A few select recent tidbits from my dayjob Cultural Oddities Hunter-Gatherer gig, with apologies to my readership, which is every bit as loyal as it is imaginary, for not having come up with any genuinely amusing or interesting ideas lately which I felt I had no chance of selling for real money elsewhere.

ALSO DOING A HECK OF A JOB While the Treasury Department estimates that cyber crime now nets more than the illegal drug trade--$105 billion per year--and over 55 million Americans were exposed to potential identity theft by computer security breaches in 2005, the Department of Homeland Security cut its spending on cybersecurity research by $16 million, or 7 percent, from 2004 to 2005.

BRAND X-CESS The lyrics of over 1/3 of the 106 rap songs that made Billboard's Top 20 in 2005 included some mention of a brand name product, with the 10 most-often-mentioned being Mercedes-Benz, Nike, Cadillac, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Hennessy, Chevrolet, Louis Vuitton, Cristal and AK-47. Beretta. incidentally, was 13th. (Among rap artists, 50 Cent led the brand-dropping with 17 products mentioned in 7 songs. Maybe time to change your nom de career to Won Buck, bro.)

SUPREME IRONY A study of transcripts of the U. S. Supreme Court's 2004-05 term shows that Justice Scalia produced 77 "laughing episodes," noted in the transcript as [laughter], while Justice Breyer produced laughter 45 times, Justice Ginsburg 4 times, and Justice Clarence Thomas not at all.

CRACK HO HO HO The number of bags of crack, somehow overlooked by the CSI team, that were found by a Camden, New Jersey jury during a murder trial when jurors inspected the victim's bloody coat : 30.

SURCHARGE According to research by the Tax Foundation, U.S. taxpayers spend 22 cents trying to comply with federal tax codes for every $1.00 that the IRS takes in.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

BUTT HOLY

Wouldn't you know it? Within 48 hours of my silly little blog posting about those things upon which the image of Jesus had not yet been reportedly seen, I run across the website of an entrepreneur by the e-commerce name of Divine Interventions, being a purveyor of sex toys, adult novelties, marital aids, choose your favorite euphemism for synthetically produced items that you thrust into yourself and/or your partner for erotic pleasure. And on that site I encounter a dismaying reality.

Some background: On my most recent blog entry, I listed, as a public service to those wishing to claim to have seen the face of Jesus on something or other, a number of items and objects that were still up for grabs, look-it's-the-spitting-image-of-Our-Lord-wise. Things that absolutely nobody had yet reported having seen the mug of the Nazarene adorning. And on my list was, of course, "butt plug." Bless me, I thought that was a pretty safe assumption.

But two days later, as I say, I had occasion to run across the Divine Interventions site. We won't waste time on such irrelevencies as why or how I happened to visit the DI dotcom. The point is, DI specializes in, not to put to fine a point on it, sacred-religious-figure dildos, items of salacious insertion fashioned in the image of sacred personages. There was a Buddha dildo, and a Virgin Mary dildo, and some other dildi, and then there was what, based on their graphics, was apparently their centerpiece item, perhaps even their corporate totem: the Baby Jesus Butt Plug. I'm just going to give you a minute or two to embrace that imagery.

Okay, it's true that I was referring, in my previous post list, to items that the visage of the adult Jesus had been perceived upon, and not novelty products that were basically tiny, pliable, obscene versions of the infant Messiah's entire head and shoulders. Still and all, as one of America's leading imaginary journalists, I've got to post the disclaimer: In the strictest satirical sense, there now has been "a butt plug with what looks to be the face of Jesus on it." Whew, thanks; I needed to get that off my chest. I feel cleaner already. Or maybe that's just the medication.